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Tyco Integrated Security

YARMOUTH, Maine—Two years after the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. brought renewed awareness to security needs in public school buildings, experts in the field say the most important measure of progress is not new technology or even new applications of existing technologies.

BOCA RATON, Fla.—Taking a page out of SimplexGrinnell’s playbook, Tyco Integrated Security is following a structured approach to making margin on its commercial security jobs, according to Tyco executives and analysts who cover the company.

CHELMSFORD, Mass.—Citing the opportunities in the financial and government sectors, network camera provider Axis Communications is beefing up its business development team and has created new positions to oversee those sectors.

ISC West can bring on sensory overload, from the din of the crowd to the glitzy displays to the lower-limb fatigue that comes with keeping yourself upright for eight hours at a stretch. Throw in the never-ending (and endlessly varying) spectacle that is Las Vegas and you have a lot to wrap your head around.

It’s quite a scene, especially for industry newcomers. That was the boat I was in last year for my Vegas initiation, which I’m glad to say resulted in little long-term damage. Aside from sleep deprivation blamed on three nights of frat house auditions in an adjacent hotel room, I emerged none the worse for wear.

Now it’s time to gear up again.

The emails with “ISC West” in the subject line are already flying and appointments are being penciled in. For those who haven’t taken a close look at the calendar lately, it might come as a surprise to learn that a return to the Sands is only seven weeks away. April will be here before you know it, with much to prepare for in the meantime.

With that in mind, I started an ISC planner yesterday. It’s quickly filling up. The educational sessions alone are enough to keep attendees focused squarely on the show instead of what might await after-hours. Here are a few sessions that drew my interest:

— “Staying Connected: Leveraging the Cloud and Mobile Applications for Enhanced Security.” Everything in the world, security included, is going mobile. If you don’t believe it, ask anyone with a smartphone—assuming they’ll look away from it long enough to answer you.

— “Counterfeit Products in the Security Industry: A Very Real Problem for All of Us.” If you don’t think they’re out there, you’re wrong. And like other knockoffs, they’re probably only going to get more difficult to detect.

— “60 Sites, 50 Miles and 5 Key Lessons Learned: How One School District Made the Move to IP Video Surveillance.” In the wake of Newtown this will be a hot-button issue, with an obvious upside for security interests.

— “The Great Debate: What to Use, What to Lose.” Technology is exploding, but "assets" deployed improperly can become expensive liabilities. Jay Hauhn of Tyco Integrated Security and Fredrik Nilsson of Axis Communications will help attendees learn from others’ mistakes and successes.

There are more than 60 educational sessions planned, starting on April 9 and running for three days. There also will be three rotations (April 10-12) of networking on the 200,000-square-foot show floor, so heels are strictly optional (for this writer, anyway). Other common-sense advice for first-timers includes not skipping breakfast—it’s easy to go through a day at the show and realize at 5 p.m. that you haven’t eaten anything—and bringing a water bottle to stay hydrated. For a complete schedule and more survival tips, go to www.iscwest.com.

Two Tyco IS executives have new/expanded roles, according to an internal Tyco announcement.

Effective this week, Jay Hauhn is now VP, Product Management and Industry Relations; Hank Monaco is now VP, Marketing.

As VP, Product Management and Industry Relations, Hauhn will oversee product technology and innovation as well as industry and government relations. He will lead product and service solution development and engineering, and is charged with the development and implementation of product strategy. Hauhn will also be in charge of the technology roadmap for strategic product vision. Hauhn, who has served as Tyco's VP, Industry Relations, will work continue to work with industry associations and Tyco’s Government Relations office.

As VP, Marketing for Tyco IS, Monaco will lead advertising, branding, communications, interactive marketing, strategy, business development and product marketing. Monaco will also identify new market opportunities and drive the development of new value-added products and services. Most recently, Monaco was VP Commercial Customer Marketing. The company said he “played a key role in leading the development and implementation of vertical market solutions roadmap … [and] developed the commercial business first ‘customer experience platform and attrition / price-based churn models,’ which enabled the business to prioritize initiatives to improve customer retention.”

In the spirit of the shopping season that is now upon us, I spoke today to Tyco Integrated Security’s Lee Pernice about trends in retail security. What's TycoIS's approach to shrinking shrink?

We talked about TycoIS's work on “shrink visibility.” TycoIS has been heavily involved with retail security for years, but it’s promoting a combination of existing technologies [RFID, EAS, video surveillance and POS systems] as a way for retail LP/security professionals to be less reactionary.

Inventory is a time-consuming process that major retailers do once or twice a year, Pernice said. By combining the four technologies above, however, LP can do inventory “more frequently and more accurately, about 20 to 30 times faster … what you would do in eight hours can be done in about 30 minutes,” she said. “And it’s much more accurate, down to the SKU [item] level versus the category level.”

Combining these systems can shed light on “what’s an LP problem and what’s an inventory-distortion problem,” she said. Typically when inventory goes missing, it’s labeled as shrink, even though it could be a receiving error or a vendor problem.

Integrating these systems also means sharing the cost among departments. Pernice notes that the cost of video surveillance, EAS tags [typically those plastic tags attached to clothing] and POS systems [point of sale] are in the LP/security budget, while RFID technology is typically paid for by logistics, or whomever is in charge of inventory.

“The benefit is this approach is trends analysis … you can look at shrink sorted by time, day, and season, you can compare patterns and adjust the LP program accordingly,” she said.

Integration of RFID with the other systems is driven by the benefits of this approach and the fact that RFID tags have come down a lot in price from a ball park of 30 or 40 cents a few years ago to about 10 cents per tag today.

That may sound like a lot of cash for tags, but when you consider that retailers lose more than $35 billion in shrink [shop lifting and employee theft] and about $100 billion because of out-of stock cost, ten cents a tag doesn’t sound so expensive.

So how much business is TycoIS doing integrating these systems for retailers? “We’re crossing that threshold from pilot to implementation,” Pernice said.

Large enterprise retailers and specialty retailers will be the early adopters, she said.“It’s gaining traction fast in department stores with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of SKUs,” she said.

Importantly, TycoIS has spent a lot of time in the past couple of years developing a software platform with a common user interface and reporting systems “so at the store level … there’s less of a learning curve.”